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UWE students design new Bristol Pounds

Issue date: 30 June 2015

Two of the new designs for the #NewBristolPounds released on Wednesday 1 July [2015] are by students from UWE Bristol.

The competition received over 300 entries from artists, amateur and professional, and school children. An independent panel of eight judges selected the eight designs to feature on the new paper Bristol Pounds.

Luke Carter, a Bristol-based illustrator who graduates from UWE this year, designed the reverse of the new £B10 paper pound which depicts 'No Colour Bar', a celebration of the successful Bristol bus boycott of 1963, led by Paul Stephenson OBE and others.

Yoshino Shigihara, who studied media at UWE, is a Bristol-based Illustrator, designer and video maker. Yoshino designed the new £B5 paper pound, on the theme of Art and Culture.

The new Bristol Pounds will be available from £B Cash Points from Wednesday 1st July. With £B800,000 spent in the first two and a half years of the Bristol Pound, it is hoped many of these new notes will be swapped for sterling and used to support local, independent businesses.

100,000 of the new printed Bristol Pounds will be issued in £B1, £B5, £B10 and £B20 denominations with a total value of £B400,000. The high-tech, security printed bills feature designs by local artists front and back.

The new designs will be on display from Tuesday 30 June to Monday 6 July in a special public exhibition at Paper Arts CiC, a social enterprise arts space in Broadmead (51-53 Merchant St, Broadmead, BS1 3EE), from 10am-6pm, along with the best artwork from the competition. Beautiful limited edition £B prints of the artwork will be available.

The Bristol Pound is the UK's first city wide local currency, the first to have electronic accounts managed by a regulated financial institution, and the first that can be used to pay some local taxes.

The Bristol Pound is run as a not-for-profit partnership between the Bristol Pound Community Interest Company and Bristol Credit Union.